The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians
About 200 years ago, European archaeologists were busy digging through the sands of what's
today the Middle East.
Mostly confined to Egypt and the southern half of Mesopotamia, the land that today makes
up the country we know as Iraq, they were searching for the remains of several places
that had been featured in the Bible, the works of Greek authors such as Herodotus and Strabo,
and the journals of medieval and renaissance travelers such as Benjamin of Tudela and
Pietro della Valle.
Babylon, Nineveh, Ur, names of places that many had heard or read about, but that few,
if any in the west at the time, knew the precise locations of.
By the early 1800s, archaeologists had made several important discoveries that culminated
with Englishman Claudius James Rich mapping the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh, where, among
other things, he collected numerous bricks, tablets, clay cylinders, and boundary stones
that were inscribed with mysterious markings.
However, they were not only present just in Babylon and Nineveh, but were found in many
other places, including in Iran at sites such as Persepolis and Behistun.
At these latter two sites, they were also accompanied by two other sets of similar but
different markings, which scholars were now convinced were not decorations, but the scripts
of unknown languages.
After the decipherment of one of the three groups, which ended up being Old Persian,
it became possible to decrypt the other two.
The script that was also present at the sites of Babylon and Nineveh was revealed to be
Akkadian, though in those days, archaeologists called it Babylonian.
The third of the trilingual inscriptions ended up being Elamite.
Though no one today speaks it, Akkadian, like modern Hebrew and Arabic, is a Semitic language
that is well understood by linguists and Near Eastern archaeologists alike.
However, in the mid-19th century, a growing number of scholars began to suspect that this
written form of Akkadian, which we call cuneiform, was not developed by the Semitic language
speakers of Babylon and Assyria, but by another people.
Many of the Babylonian inscriptions and texts that were starting to be translated at the
time contained the phrase, Sumer and Akkad, as in, Land of Sumer and Akkad, or King of
Sumer and Akkad.
It's obvious that Sumer was a place, but where was it?
And who were the inhabitants of Sumer, who they called Sumerians?
Could this unconventional script have come from these, up until now, completely unknown
people?
Scholars were stuck in a conundrum.
They didn't know it at the time, but those early archaeologists had stumbled upon what
some call the mother civilization of both the Babylonians and the Assyrians.
We know these people today as the Sumerians.
By around 7000 to 6000 BC, people began to move south along the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers to what were by then the fertile flood plains of Mesopotamia, specifically in the
land that today makes up most of Iraq and parts of northern Syria.
Mesopotamia, which means, Land between rivers, is the Greek name for the area, and it's
here that early farms began to really take root on a much larger scale.
The land of Mesopotamia is quite flat, and really consists of thousands of years of silt
spread across the plain by the constant flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
This soil was, and is still today, extremely rich and fertile, making it ideal for growing
crops such as wheat and barley.
Small scale farming had already been achieved several thousand years prior in parts of the
Near East that we call the Fertile Crescent, which is a region of productive land that
stretches north up the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean, east through the mountains of
Turkey and northern Iraq, before venturing south along the flood plains of the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers towards the Persian Gulf.
One of these early farming communities that was widespread in central Mesopotamia was
the Samara culture, named after the site of Samara where it was first discovered.
Estimates vary, but most archaeologists date this culture to between 6500 to 5500 BC.
Samaran pottery has its own distinctive style that's often decorated with geometric images
representing natural phenomena.
The early farmers of this culture seemed to have dug irrigation canals to bring nearby
rivers and streams under their control.
Another culture that ended up being more widespread than the Samara is known as the Halaf culture.
It was most active between the years 6500 to 5500 BC, though some date it to the later,
more narrower span of time between 5700 to 5000 BC.
Similar to the Samara, they also created very distinctive and beautiful ceramic objects
and pottery that was widely traded throughout the Fertile Crescent.
In return, the Halaf people generally received goods such as obsidian, bitumen, and seashells.
They also created some of the earliest examples of stamp seals.
Not too long after 6000 BC, in southern Mesopotamia, changes began to take place that would ultimately
set the stage for civilization as we know it.
It more or less started with the people who belonged to what archaeologists call the Ubaid
culture.
We'll refer to the people of this culture as Ubaidians.
They are of special interest to scholars because their civilization occupied the region
immediately before the rise of the Sumerians and the creation of their first cities.
The culture is named after Tel al-Ubaid, a site not too far from what would become the
great Sumerian city of Ur, which also began as an Ubaidian settlement.
Most scholars date the Ubaid culture to between 5500 to 4000 BC.
The exact origins of the Ubaidians are unknown, but it's believed that they were likely migrants
from other parts of the Fertile Crescent looking for new pastures for their flocks and virgin
soil that could be cultivated for their crops.
Most Ubaidian sites were small villages, though by the late 5th, early 4th millennium BC,
some of these settlements are believed to have grown into towns of nearly 5000 residents
where they grew wheat, barley, and lentils, in addition to raising livestock, including
cattle, goats, and sheep.
The typical Ubaidian village generally consisted of several one-story single-family houses
with a few large structures and facilities designed as storage bins for grain and other
foodstuffs.
Most Ubaid sites had a central earthen mound with a small building at its summit, which
is believed to have been an early temple and the precursor to the ziggurat that would
later on dominate the skylines of many Mesopotamian cities.
Like the Halaf, the Ubaid also traded their unique, hand-painted pottery, as well as other
crafts such as figurines.
Ubaid pottery is something that must have been prized all over the region because it's
been found at multiple sites throughout the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran, Syria,
and across the southeastern regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
Much of our understanding of Ubaid culture comes from the ruins of a city that later
on would be famous in Sumerian mythology as the home of the god Enki.
That city was Eridu.
Even in antiquity, Eridu was believed to have been a very ancient, almost mythical place.
For example, in the very beginning of the text known as the Sumerian King List, it's written,
After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridu.
In Eridu, Alulim became king.
He ruled for 28,800 years.
Alalgar ruled for 36,000 years.
They ruled for a total of 6,800 years.
Then Eridu fell, and the kingship was taken to Bad Tabira.
Another later Babylonian poem states,
A reed had not come forth, a tree had not been created, a house had not been made, a
city had not been made.
All the lands were sea.
Then Eridu made.
In spite of both of these texts being more works of mythology than history, the later
peoples of Mesopotamia may have been on to something.
Archaeologists have determined that the site of Eridu may have been inhabited as far back
as 8,000 BC, over 10,000 years ago.
During the Ubaid period, Eridu was a good place to settle down.
It had plenty of land suitable for farming, as well as plenty of fish that could be attained
from the nearby marshes close to the gulf.
In those days, the shores of what's today the Persian Gulf were much further inland
than they are today.
Such a place in those days may have seemed to have been a paradise in what was otherwise
a dry, inhospitable desert.
The local inhabitants may have even thought that it was the home of a god.
That god would be Enki, the god of fresh waters, the sciences, technology, and the arts, who
was also known for his wisdom and had a soft spot for mankind.
He would go on to become one of the most prominent deities in the Sumerian pantheon.
During the Ubaid period, Eridu was still just a small village community with a rather humble
shrine dedicated to Enki.
Excavations at Eridu show that initially, Enki's sanctuary was little more than a small
brick room less than 8 square meters, with an altar at one end and a stand in the center
for ritual offerings.
In fact, ashes and fish bones have been discovered here, which may have been part of some ritual
offerings to the god.
Some archaeologists believe that every so often, the people of Eridu would take part
in communal feasts that may have involved prayers to the god along with singing and
music.
As the town grew, both the temple and the village expanded.
By 4500 BC, the temple stood on a platform about a meter high.
The expansion and height of the temple would continue to increase during the centuries
until it turned into a step-like pyramid called a ziggurat.
As villages such as Eridu grew into prosperous towns, they attracted travelers and merchants.
Some may have come to visit its temples and sanctuaries, like those dedicated to Enki,
and make their own offerings to the god.
Many of them brought items from their own villages and towns that they donated to such
temples were traded for local goods, such as barley, sheep, or some of Eridu's distinctive
pottery.
An interesting example of international trade in Eridu at the time had to do with copper.
Copper is a very useful metal, but it's not native to southern Mesopotamia.
It had to be imported into the region from places as far away as what's today modern
Oman or Turkey.
It's quite remarkable that even during the Ubaid period, artisans were forging basic
items out of copper in Eridu.
Another item imported into the region, also likely from Turkey, was obsidian.
Up until now, the early settlements that we've been taking a look at have all been quite
small, perhaps a few hundred people on average, the exception being places like Eridu or Tel
Zaidan in Syria.
Both of these places during the Ubaid period may have had as many as 3,000 people at any
given time.
Few would have thought though that perhaps only a millennium later, there would be a
city in ancient Mesopotamia with a population in the tens of thousands.
Less than 200 kilometers northwest of Eridu is the site of Uruk.
It's here that most archaeologists and historians believe that the world's first true city came
into being sometime during the 4th millennium BC.
Though it's impossible to know for sure, archaeological surveys seem to indicate that by 3500 BC,
Uruk may have had at least 25,000 residents.
This may not seem like much to us today.
In most places, especially in the western world, 25,000 residents is perhaps at best
a medium-sized town.
However, in the 4th millennium BC, this would have been a mega-urban center, a place that
those living in towns like Eridu a few generations earlier would not have been able to have even
comprehended.
Historians call this rapid growth of cities in southern Mesopotamia between the years
4000 to 3100 BC the Uruk phenomenon, or the Uruk period.
It's also believed by many archaeologists and historians that sometime during this period,
a people whose real origin is unknown may have entered into the region and mixed with
the local Ubaid population, adopting much of their culture and religion as their own.
What the Ubaidians called them is anyone's guess.
They however would call themselves Sagiga, meaning the black-headed people, and their
homeland Kiendir.
In the past, villages were believed to have been ruled by a small council of elders presided
over by a tribal chieftain.
However, the rise of cities divided society into multiple classes that were ruled by religious,
military, and political elites.
Though the specifics of early government in Uruk aren't known, it's believed that
the person at the top was a sort of priest-king who held both religious and secular authority.
Below him on the social hierarchy were other priests, followed by a few elites or what
we'd classify as noble families, and then specialized laborers including artisans, craftsmen,
fishermen, farmers, gardeners, and herdsmen, just to name a few.
In later centuries, with the advent of writing, a scribal class would also develop.
Below all of these were slaves.
Cities were also the place where certain objects were first produced in mass quantity.
In the past, everyday items such as pottery and textiles were produced at home and generally
for private use.
However, during the Uruk period, specialized artisans and weavers mostly took over this
task.
The objects and clothing that they created may not have been decorated as ornately as
in the past, but that wasn't the point.
They simply had to be well-made and useful.
An example of this are the beveled-rimmed bowls discovered in Uruk.
Fancy, they weren't, but they did the job.
The day-to-day functioning of such an ancient, urban society required some type of authority
to help organize tasks and distribute resources, as well as to keep order.
In Uruk, as in other urban areas during this period, this was made possible by religion.
Each city had a patron deity who technically, at least when they were on earth, lived in
the city, usually at a shrine or temple dedicated to it.
In Eridu, we saw that this deity was the god Enki.
In Uruk, that honor went primarily to the goddess Inanna, although the god An also had
a large temple there.
In theory, the god of each city received goods from the people, which were a form of taxes
usually denominated in wheat, barley, pottery, textiles, or whatever useful items could be given.
This was then redistributed to both the religious and political establishment, and then later
to the general population.
In most cases, this redistribution took place in the city's main temple complex, run by
specially dedicated priests and priestesses, who also conducted religious rituals.
As cities grew larger, the redistribution of goods and services became much more complicated.
There were just so many different types of goods, as well as people with different professions
that needed to be accounted for, and who depended on the temple's redistribution of resources
for their survival.
It was important for the temple bureaucrats to keep track of all of this activity, and
so an early system of writing was developed specifically for this purpose.
Dating to about 3300 BC and written on small, clay tablets, the first forms of writing were
pictographs that recorded the transfer of commodities such as grain, beer, and livestock.
We call this very early script protokuneform.
With over 700 signs, it was quite complete, though it's highly likely that it was based
off an earlier, more primitive system that has yet to be discovered, rather than developed
all at once or by a single individual.
This very early pictographic script was made up of pictures with relatively simple meanings.
For instance, a head of a bull was used to represent cattle, while an ear of barley represented,
you guessed it, barley.
Sometimes though, the meaning was not as clear and had to be read by association with another
symbol.
For example, the sign of a bowl could mean food or bread.
Coupled with the sign of a human head, the two together meant to eat.
Several centuries later, the form of the signs was adapted so that they could be written
faster and with a reed stylus by making wedged impressions into a soft tablet of clay, which
we today call cuneiform.
The clay would then be laid out in the sun where it would dry and harden, making the
wedged impressions permanent.
Cuneiform was ideal for writing the Sumerian language because almost all of the words in
Sumerian are one syllable in length.
This meant that it was possible to write down one symbol for nearly every spoken word.
It's due to the discovery and translation of such cuneiform documents that even after
so many thousands of years, we're still able to peer into the lives of the people of ancient
Mesopotamia.
Though not a form of writing, other objects that were used for communication were cylinder
seals.
As their name implies, these are cylinders, usually made out of stone or clay, but sometimes
also from metal, bone, or ivory, with the design carved into them so that when they're
rolled across a slab of wet clay, a continuous impression is created.
Such seals were used for sealing storeroom locks, goods in jars, or vases, boxes, and
even baskets.
The seals could also be used to confirm the identity of the sender or authorize important
documents coming from someone in a position of power, such as a priest or high-ranking
bureaucrat.
The influence of the Uruk phenomenon wasn't limited to southern Mesopotamia, but spread
throughout much of the ancient Near East between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC.
Archaeologists have uncovered numerous remains of Uruk-style pottery and architecture at
sites in Syria, Iran, and Turkey.
It seems that much of this was not just taken from Uruk, but brought to these regions by
trading colonies that were set up specifically for the purpose of acquiring raw materials
such as copper, obsidian, lead, gold, silver, wood, and stone for buildings.
Eventually, they would even import tin, which was needed for making bronze.
It's unknown when exactly the first kings appeared in Mesopotamia or how this position
really functioned.
Before this, power was in the hands of high-ranking priests whose job, along with religious duties,
included organizing the general population, collecting taxes, and distributing goods and
services.
They had the authority to do such things because they were believed to have directly represented
the gods, or at least to have known their desires.
However, no amount of divine intervention could provide physical security from one's
foreign enemies.
Being a pious priest or priestess didn't mean that such a person was a good warrior or military
strategist.
As cities grew in size, so too did competition for scarce resources and farmland, and eventually,
armed conflicts between city-states occurred.
The need for strong, charismatic individuals who could lead men into battle was of utmost
importance, and it's probably due to this that the first kings arose amongst the growing
population of ancient Mesopotamia.
Though initially it may have been a temporary position needed only during war, eventually
the position of king became hereditary.
By 2900 BC, kings were commonplace in ancient Sumer, and scholars have used this date for
the start of what they call the Early Dynastic Period, which lasted nearly 600 years.
The rulers of city-states generally had one of three titles, En, which roughly translates
to lord, Ensi, which was a governor or local king, and Lugal, which was generally given
to more powerful rulers or great kings.
For example, if a king happened to rule over more than one city, then he could be addressed
as a Lugal, which literally means great man.
A Lugal could have several Ensis ruling other cities on his behalf.
Most cities were surrounded by high walls to protect the temples, administrative buildings,
palaces, houses, and of course, the people who lived and worked within them.
Of all of these structures, the large, step-pyramid-like temple known as the ziggurat was the most
important.
The ziggurat was not just a place of worship, but the actual terrestrial home of the city's
patron god on earth.
Run directly by the priests, it was also the city's chief landowner and richest institution.
Sumerian deities, like later Greek and Roman ones, took human form and often behaved like
people.
They were emotional, jealous, at times petty, and according to Sumerian myths and legends,
often interfered in the affairs of humans.
There were hundreds of such deities in charge of everything from natural phenomenon to household
items.
For example, there was a god of the sky, sun, and moon, but also a god of the plow, bricks,
a goddess of writing, and so on.
An was the god of the sky and the heavens, whose main temple was in Uruk.
However, he wasn't its patron deity.
That honor went to the goddess of love and war, Inanna.
Though An in earlier times may have been considered the most powerful deity of all,
by the early dynastic period, it was clearly Enlil, whose name means Lord Wind, and was
the god of the air.
His holy sanctuary was in the city of Nippur.
Another powerful and extremely popular god was Enki, whose name means Lord Earth, though
he's also the god of sweet or fresh water.
As mentioned earlier, he was the patron god of the city of Eridu, as well as of scientists
and magicians.
Another popular god was Utu, the god of the sun, who was associated with justice and the
patron deity of both Sipar and Larsa.
Then of course there was Nana, the god of the moon and the patron deity of the city
of Ur.
One of the more powerful gods was Ningirsu, the patron deity of the city-state of Lagash,
whose main temple was in Girsu.
He was associated with both farming and war.
By 2500 BC, royal inscriptions and even portraits of individual kings start to appear.
These have greatly helped us to piece together the political history of Sumer and its various
kingdoms.
One of these early inscriptions, along with the depiction of a king, is of Ur-Nanshi,
the ruler of the city-state of Lagash, who's believed to have reigned between the years
2494 to 2465 BC.
One of the most famous depictions of Ur-Nanshi is a limestone relief of the king with what
appears to be a basket of clay bricks on his head.
Currently in the Louvre, the relief depicts the king in one of his most important religious
of consecrating and taking care of his kingdom's many temples, especially those dedicated to
Lagash's patron deity, the god Ningirsu.
Ur-Nanshi's other vital role was as the military leader of Lagash.
From various texts that have been put together, we know that he went to war with the neighboring
city-states of Ur and Umar.
In fact, it may have been during his reign that a centuries-old rivalry was started with
Umar, which we'll get to shortly.
Most early inscriptions, though, were quite simple and often just consisted of a ruler's
name on a votive object.
For example, one stone vessel dated to 2650 BC and found in the ruins of a temple merely
reads,
Embegaresi, King of Kish.
Other inscriptions, though, go into a bit more detail.
A slightly later one from Kish reads,
Misalim, King of Kish, Ningirsu's temple builder.
Place this for Ningirsu.
Lugal-sha-engur, is the ruler of Lagash.
At first glance, the text seems to tell us little except that Musalim, the king of the
city of Kish, built a temple for the god Ningirsu, and that Lugal-sha-engur is the
NC, or ruler, of Lagash.
However, combined with other documents that have been uncovered, we learn that Musalim,
along with being the king of Kish, was at least powerful enough to influence events
in other city-states, such as those of rivals Lagash and Umar.
He may have even ruled over both cities, but this might be a stretch.
Regardless, we're told in a later text by King Enmetena of Lagash the following.
Enlil, king of all the lands, father of all the gods, by his firm command, fixed the border
between the kingdom of Lagash and the kingdom of Umar.
Misalim, king of Kish, at the command of the goddess Ishtaran, measured the field and set
up a boundary stone there.
The actual text literally says,
"...fixed a border between Ningirsu and Shara, who were the patron gods of Lagash and Umar,
respectively."
Thus, in a wider sense, this was as much a conflict between two deities as it was between
two kings and the cities they presided over.
From the same text by Enmetena, we learn even more Sumerian political history.
Ush, the ruler of Umar, acted haughtily.
He ripped out that boundary stone and marched towards the plain of Lagash.
Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil, at his just command, made war with Umar.
At Enlil's command, he threw his great battle net over it and heaped up burial mounds for
it on a plain.
Iyanatum, ruler of Lagash, uncle of Enmetena, ruler of Lagash, fixed the border with Enakale,
ruler of Umar, made the boundary extend from the Nun Canal to the Guedena.
At the boundary channel, he inscribed new boundary stones and restored the boundary
stone of Misalim.
He did not cross into the plain of Umar.
Some more specifics about the size of the fields are given, and we're also told that
Umar is forced to pay reparations in the form of what seems to have been an incredibly large
sum of barley along with future interest payments.
Umar, though, is unable to pay, and according to the text, the following occurs.
Because he could not repay the barley, Urluma, the ruler of Umar, made irrigation water flow
in the boundary channel of Ningirsu and the boundary channel of Nanshi.
He torched and tore out the boundary stones, recruited soldiers from foreign lands, and
crossed the boundary channel of Ningirsu.
Enenatum, ruler of Lagash, battled with him in Ugiga, Ningirsu's beloved field.
Enmetena, beloved son of Enenatum, defeated him.
Urluma fled, but he, Enmetena, killed him in Umar.
The text rambles on about Umar's other crimes and offenses against Lagash and the gods.
One thing, though, is clear.
The city-states of Lagash and Umar had what seems to have been a long conflict over the
fertile land that ran between them.
One very famous work of Sumerian art, what's known as the Stele of the Vultures, also depicts
the conflict between Lagash and Umar in vivid detail.
Commissioned by King Enenatum of Lagash, Enmetena's predecessor, it depicts a fierce battle over
the same area, specifically the fertile fields of Gudiena, where Lagash is victorious over
the forces of Umar.
It's from different texts and monuments such as these that scholars have been able to slowly
put together the political history of Sumer and other parts of the ancient Near East.
As you can see, though, it's not an easy process.
Historians often have to play a game of connect the dots, and even then, many questions are
left unanswered.
For example, one major issue is that we don't know Umar's side of the story of its conflict
with Lagash.
Perhaps its leaders were justified in violating a treaty that may have been biased against
the city-state from the start.
According to all accounts of the conflict, Lagash was victorious several times against
its long-term rival, but as we'll soon see, Umar would strike back.
In addition to Eredu, Uruk, Kish, Lagash, and Umar, there were several other important
cities of ancient Sumer.
Two of the most prominent were Ur and Nippur.
Ur, though, is the more well-known of the two, and perhaps the most famous Sumerian
city of all due to two things.
It's mentioned in the Bible as the birthplace of the prophet Abraham, and also as the place
where a cache of marvelous objects were discovered in the 1920s by a team of archaeologists led
by Sir Charles Leonard Woolley.
Like Uruk and other Sumerian cities, Ur's founding also dates back to the Ubaid period.
Located on what was once the banks of the Euphrates River, Ur was the home of Nana,
the god of the moon.
Some of the most impressive finds came from several extraordinary tombs dating back to
the early dynastic period.
There were approximately 1,050 burial pits, along with 17 extremely elaborate tombs filled
with all types of luxury items.
Despite the fact that they were from approximately 2600 BC, the graves and tombs were relatively
intact and had over the centuries avoided grave robbers.
Many of the objects uncovered included gold armor, weapons, intricate jewelry, chariots,
sculptures, musical instruments, board games, and bowls.
The 17 extremely elaborate tombs are believed to have belonged to members of Ur's ruling
class or the royal family itself.
Along with the king, there were dozens of people who scholars believe may have been
the king's attendants and soldiers while he was alive.
In order to join their master in whatever afterlife they believed was awaiting them,
they either killed themselves or were killed and then buried along with the king in the
tomb.
Whether or not the attendants and soldiers went to their end willingly isn't known,
nor is why such a thing happened, since to date there haven't been any other royal
burials like this one found in Mesopotamia.
When it comes to Sumerian religion, no other place was more important than the holy city
of Nippur.
This was the location of the Ikur, the temple dedicated to the supreme god of the Sumerian
pantheon Enlil.
Due to its status as a holy city, Nippur is said to never have had a king.
Officially, it was politically neutral.
That though didn't stop kings and empire builders of Mesopotamia from making pilgrimages
there and lavishing the Ikur with expensive gifts in an effort to receive some divine
favor.
Like in many, if not most societies, even those that may have started out as being rather
egalitarian, at one time or another, the divide between rich and poor widened, often leading
to unrest and sometimes revolution.
In the 24th century BC, such a series of events occurred in the city-state of Lagash.
As we saw earlier, Lagash had once been a very powerful state under kings like Urnanshi,
Iannatum, and Enmetena.
However, for reasons unknown, the dynasty founded by Urnanshi was disbanded, with a
priest coming to power and eventually nominating one of their own, Enantarsi, to become Lagash's
ruler.
Such a move was unprecedented, at least during the early dynastic period.
With Enantarsi in charge, Lagash's priestly class not only controlled the wealthy temple
apparatus, but also all of the major institutions of the government.
To nobody's surprise, corruption ran rampant.
Enantarsi's successor, Lugalanda, was also of the priestly class, and he took corruption
to a whole new level.
During his reign, more than half of Lagash's land holdings came under his direct control,
not to mention the temples and religious sanctuaries.
Those who disagreed with Lugalanda were dismissed from their positions.
He also levied heavy taxes on nearly everything, including special occasions such as weddings
and even funerals.
Such actions put ordinary people and their families into massive debt.
Things got so bad that according to some documents, impoverished parents had to sell their children
into slavery to help pay off their debts.
After six years of corruption and tyranny, Lugalanda was overthrown by Urukagina, whose
name is also read Uru-inim-gina.
Urukagina saw himself as a reformer and along with being a capable ruler, is best known
for coming up with possibly the first known written code of laws.
I say possibly because we've never actually found a copy of Urukagina's law code.
However, we know about it and what some of the laws were from other documents that reference it.
An excerpt from one of the texts describes, in rather poetic form, how Urukagina prevented
the seizure of assets by tax collectors and monopolists.
But when Ningirsu, the foremost warrior of Enlil, gave kingship of Lagash to Urukagina,
and his hand had grasped him out of the multitude, then Ningirsu enjoined upon him the divine
decrees of former days.
Urukagina held close to the word which his king, Ningirsu, spoke to him.
He banned the man in charge of the boatmen from seizing the boats.
He banned the head of the shepherds from seizing the donkeys and sheep.
He banned the man in charge of the fisheries from seizing the fisheries.
By his own account, it seems that Urukagina was a man of the people.
Unfortunately, his reign and reforms were too little, too late.
Lagash's weakness had not gone unnoticed by its neighbors, most notably by the new
king of its great rival, the city-state of Umma.
In 2341 BC, a man named Lugal-Zagazi became the new Nc of Umma.
Not much is known about his life before he became king, but in his second year as Umma's
he attacked and ultimately conquered the city-state of Lagash.
Perhaps out of vengeance for so many centuries of being bullied by its once great rival,
Lugal-Zagazi's men burned, plundered, and destroyed Lagash, its capital of Girsu, and
all of its holy places, including the great temple of its patron god, Ningirsu.
In one text that was uncovered, a scribe from Lagash lamented the destruction of Ningirsu's
city and cursed Lugal-Zagazi.
He Lugal-Zagazi has ruined the barley field of Ningirsu as much as had been plowed.
Because the man of Umma destroyed the bricks of Lagash, he committed a sin against Ningirsu.
He will cut off his hands which had been lifted against him.
It is not the sin of Uruk-Hagina, the king of Girsu.
May Nidaba, the personal goddess of Lugal-Zagazi, the Nc of Umma, make him bear all his sins.
Lugal-Zagazi though did not stop with Lagash, and would go on to claim to control not just
all of Sumer, but the lands from the lower sea, that is the Persian Gulf, to the upper
sea, meaning the Mediterranean.
In a well-known inscription on Arvaz that he himself had commissioned, Lugal-Zagazi
wants us to know the following.
When Enlil, the king of all the lands, had given the kingship of the land to Lugal-Zagazi,
had directed him the eyes of all the people of the land, had prostrated all the people
before him, then all the people from the lower sea, along the Tigris and Euphrates to the
upper sea, directed their feet toward him.
From east to west, Enlil gave him no rival.
The people of all the lands lie peacefully in the meadow under his rule.
The land rejoiced under his rule.
All the sovereigns of Sumer and the Ncs of all the foreign lands bowed down before him
in Uruk.
If this were true, then Lugal-Zagazi would have created the first real empire in history.
Unfortunately for him, he's not remembered as such, nor do modern scholars believe that
he actually ruled over all of the lands that he claimed to.
Lugal-Zagazi would be defeated by a man who would arguably become the most celebrated
and influential person in all of early antiquity.
He was not a Sumerian, but an Akkadian whose birth name is unknown, but who would call
himself Sharukhin, meaning legitimate king.
We know him as Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great.
The early history of Sargon is obscured in myth and legend.
We don't even know his real name, only that he later called himself Sharikhinu, also read
Sharukhin, which in the Akkadian language means true or legitimate king.
One story of his early years is that his mother, who was a priestess of the goddess Ishtar,
the Akkadian name for Inanna, cast him away in a basket down the Euphrates River, where
he was eventually picked up by a gardener who raised him.
The legend continues, with Sargon eventually becoming the cupbearer of Ur-Zubaba, the king
of the city-state of Kish.
It was during this time that Lugal-Zagazi of Umma was gobbling up the city-states of
Sumer into one great Mesopotamian power, with Uruk as its new capital.
However, his plans for near-eastern domination came to an end when Sargon and his band of
followers marched south from Kish to Uruk and captured Lugal-Zagazi.
The document known as the Sumerian King List tells us the following.
In Uruk, Lugal-Zagazi became king and reigned for 25 years.
One king reigned for 25 years.
Then Uruk was defeated and the kingship taken to Agade.
In Agade, Sargon, whose father was a gardener, reigned for 56 years.
Sargon's own words of his Sumerian campaign are a bit more detailed.
In an old Babylonian copy of a document attributed to him, he speaks of himself in the following
way.
Sargon, the king of Akkad, the bailiff of Ishtar, the king of the universe, the anointed
one of An, the king of the land, the governor of Enlil.
He vanquished Uruk in battle and smote fifty governors and the city by the mace of the
god Elaba.
And he destroyed its fortress and captured Lugal-Zagazi, the king of Uruk, in battle.
He led him to the gate of Enlil in a neck stock.
Sargon of Akkad vanquished Ur in battle and smote the city and destroyed its fortress.
He smote its territory Enlagash as far as the sea.
He vanquished Umma in battle and destroyed its fortress.
It's with Sargon's conquest of southern Mesopotamia around 2334 BC that the early dynastic period
of Sumer comes to an end.
Sargon though didn't stop with Sumer.
Unlike Lugal-Zagazi, who may have only boasted about conquering an empire from the Persian
Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, most scholars believe that Sargon actually did that and
more.
One could go on about the conquests and exploits of Sargon, his two sons, and his powerful
grandson Naram-Sin, but these are stories for another time.
What's more important for our purpose here is the effects of the Akkadian conquest on
Sumer and its inhabitants.
The people that we know as the Akkadians came from the land just north of Sumer known as
Akkad, what would now make up a good part of central and northern Iraq.
For centuries they had lived side by side with the Sumerians and may have even constituted
sizable populations within Sumer's core cities.
At the time though, they themselves didn't have a written language, so our early knowledge
of them is quite limited.
The Akkadians spoke an eastern Semitic language that we also call Akkadian.
Unlike Sumerian, which is a language isolate, Akkadian is similar to other well understood
Semitic languages including Canaanite, Aramaic, and even modern Hebrew and Arabic.
When Sargon conquered all of Sumer, he made the Akkadian language the official one and
adopted the Sumerian script for its written form.
This though doesn't mean that Sumerian was no longer spoken or even written, but that
it was slowly being replaced in daily life as all official documents and proclamations
were now in Akkadian.
Sargon seems to have taken a great deal of pride in the fact that he was not of noble
birth, something that he stressed in early autobiographies of himself.
Perhaps this made him more relatable to the average person.
After all, how else could an Akkadian outsider muster enough power and influence to topple
the Sumerian establishment and unify them all under his banner?
He broke the power of the priesthood, the local ensies, and the Sumerian nobility and
replaced them with Akkadian governors who were loyal to him.
Sargon and his successors also reorganized and redistributed temple lands and mostly
gave them to their hardcore supporters and loyalists.
This really crushed the power of the priesthood because up until then, such property had been
their main source of revenue.
He also put his daughter, Enhedouana, in charge of the wealthy temple complex in the city
of Ur.
With its millennia-old cities, temple establishments, and other institutions, Sumer had been the
center of civilization in Mesopotamia, the Near Eastern region, and possibly even the
world up until that time, although the civilizations of China, Egypt, and the Indus Valley were
also on the rise.
Sargon though shifted this center when he established his new capital of Akkad on the
Euphrates River, better known as Agade.
It was here that he built palaces and temples dedicated to his patron deities, specifically
the goddess Ishtar and the warrior god of Kish, Zababa.
Not only did Agade become the political center of the Akkadian Empire, but its main economic
hub as well.
Boats carrying goods from Dilmun and Magan, today modern Bahrain and Oman, respectively,
docked at Agade's ports, and caravans from Anatolia, Elam, Arabia, and the Levant all
came to Agade.
Sargon and his successors also reformed the tax system, with most of the revenue coming
directly to Agade before being distributed to other parts of the empire.
Such actions were all at the expense of Sumerian cities such as Uruk, Lagash, and Ur, which
before Sargon's conquest of Sumer had been amongst the most prosperous cities of ancient
Mesopotamia.
As far as we know, Sargon kept a pretty tight grip on power during his reign between 2334-2279
BC.
When he died, several rebellions broke out and his sons who succeeded him, first Rimush
and then Manishtushu, had a difficult time keeping the empire together.
The cities of Sumer were in constant rebellion and only subdued after much violence and brutality.
Though Sargon's grandson, Naramsin, was able to stabilize and then expand the Akkadian
empire into new territories, by the end of the reign of his successor, Shar-Khali-Shari
in 2193 BC, the Akkadian state may have held little territory outside of Agade.
The Sumerian king list seems to describe a chaotic time during which there were several
kings with short reigns whose true lineages were unknown.
Shar-Khali-Shari, son of Naramsin, ruled for 25 years.
Then who was king?
Who was not king?
Irgigi was king.
Nanum was king.
Imi was king.
Ilulu was king.
Those four kings ruled for 3 years.
Dudu reigned for 21 years.
Shudur-al, the son of Dudu, reigned for 15 years.
Though the Akkadian empire was no more, the final nail in the coffin came several years
later when a people from the Zagros mountains, known as the Gutians, swept in, overthrew
Shudur-al and destroyed Agade.
Most scholars believe that it was a bit more complicated than that.
Recent findings seem to indicate that severe famine and drought may have been the real
culprit, causing instability in both Sumer and Akkad as well as the collapse of the regional
economy.
This would have no doubt triggered massive unrest amongst the general population and
ultimately brought the Akkadian state to a point where it could no longer hold on to
its many territories.
The central authority in Agade broke down, and one by one, like dominoes, provinces of
the Akkadian empire seceded.
In such circumstances, people like the Gutians probably saw an opportunity to raid, plunder,
and perhaps seize some territory for themselves.
What was going on in this new post-Akkadian world is not very clear, but the Sumerian
king list seems to indicate that the most stable area in Mesopotamia may have been Uruk.
Then, Agade was defeated, and the kingship was taken to Uruk.
In Uruk, Ur-Nigin became king.
He ruled for seven years.
Ur-Jijir, son of Ur-Nigin, ruled for six years.
Kuda ruled for six years.
Puzor-Ili ruled for five years.
Ur-Utu ruled for six years.
Five kings ruled for thirty years.
After this, we have the dynasty of Gutium and Gutian rule of the region.
Uruk was defeated, and the kingship was taken to the army of Gutium.
The army of Gutium, a king whose name is unknown.
Nibiya became king.
He ruled for three years.
Then N'gishu ruled for six years.
Ikukumlakaba ruled for six years.
Shulme ruled for six years.
Silulumesh ruled for six years.
And the list goes on until it tells us,
21 kings who ruled for 91 years and 40 days.
Gutian kings are unknown to us from any other evidence or documents, with the exception
of one who doesn't actually appear on the Sumerian king list.
His name was Eridu Wizir, and a few statues found in Nippur indicate that he was king
of Gutium and of the Four Quarters.
Other than this, little material evidence of a Gutian presence in Sumer has been discovered.
It's quite possible that they had little real control over Sumer and perhaps only sent
troops or kept a garrison in some cities in order to ensure the collection of tribute.
In some places, the Gutians may have even appointed the Nc from amongst the locals to
collect tribute and govern on their behalf.
Some areas actually seem to have flourished during the time when the Sumerian king list
claims that the Gutians ruled.
One of them was Lagash under its king, Gudia.
Believed to have ruled between the years 2141 to 2122 BC, Gudia was a very pious ruler who
claims to have built hundreds of temples for the gods, especially for Lagash's patron
deity Ningirsu.
A humble man who only took the title of Nc despite the fact that he probably ruled over
several cities, Gudia presented himself not as a powerful conqueror to be feared but more
like a shepherd protecting his flock, which in this case were the people that he ruled
over.
In nearly all of his major inscriptions, he simply praises the god Ningirsu and dedicates
his life to the deity.
This was a big change from the boasting of cities conquered and enemies slain that was
often the hallmark of the royal inscriptions of the kings who had preceded him.
At the end of the day, the Gutians were outsiders and most Sumerians, if later texts are to
be believed, considered themselves to be superior to them.
It was only a matter of time before a local Nc from Uruk named Utuhegal finally organized
a force to end the Gutian presence in Sumer.
Excerpts from an inscription attributed to Utuhegal state the following.
Enlil, the king of all the lands, commissioned Utuhegal, the mighty man, the king of Uruk,
the king of the four quarters, to destroy the name of Gutium, the snake and the scorpion
of the mountain, who carried off the kingship of Sumer to the foreign land.
We're then told that Utuhegal made preparations to attack the Gutians and prayed to the gods
for their support and blessings.
The text continues.
In that very night he went to Utu and made supplication to him.
Utuh, Enlil has given me Gutium.
Be you my ally in this.
At that place, Gutium gathered its forces and sent forth the troops against him.
Utuhegal, the mighty man, conquered them.
Then Tirigan, the king of Gutium, fled all by himself back toward Gutium.
In Dubrum, where he had taken refuge, he was treated kindly, but since the men of Dubrum
knew that Utuhegal was the king to whom Enlil had granted might, they did not set Tirigan
free.
The envoy of Utuhegal took Tirigan and his family, prisoner in Dubrum, placed stalks
of wood upon his hands and blindfolded him.
He was then brought before Utuhegal, threw himself at his feet, and he, Utuhegal, set
his foot upon his neck.
He returned the kingship to Sumer.
And so, Utuhegal defeated the Gutians and came back to Uruk to found its fifth known
dynasty.
He's the only ruler of that dynasty because unfortunately he died shortly after becoming
king, supposedly while inspecting one of Uruk's canals.
He was succeeded by his son-in-law, the former governor of Ur, a man who went by the name
Ur-Namu, who himself founded his own dynasty in 2112 BC.
Historians call it the Third Dynasty of Ur, also known as Ur III for short.
The start of Ur-Namu's reign also ushers in what we refer to as the Neo-Sumerian period.
Not much is known about Ur-Namu's early years, though it's believed that he may have supported
Utuhegal in his short war against the Gutians.
He was also married to Utuhegal's daughter.
After securing his position as king, Ur-Namu annexed the cities of Lagash and Eredu.
Like Gudia a few decades prior, he seems to have wanted his subjects to view him more
as a shepherd or father figure rather than as a conqueror.
And like another past king of Lagash, Uruk-Agina, Ur-Namu also had a code of laws.
Some believe that this may have actually been the first written code of laws in history
and not that of Uruk-Agina, whose actual code has not yet been discovered, but only referenced
to in other documents.
Though the copy that we have is badly damaged, the original code is believed to have been
made up of 40 paragraphs and contained both civil and criminal offenses along with their
punishments.
Here's a sample.
If a man committed a kidnapping, he is to be imprisoned and pay fifteen shekels of silver.
If a man proceeded by force and deflowered the virgin slave woman of another man, that
man must pay five shekels of silver.
If a man appeared as a witness and was shown to be a perjurer, he must pay fifteen shekels
of silver.
If a man knocked out the eye of another man, he shall weigh out half a mina of silver.
If a man knocked out the tooth of another man, he shall pay two shekels of silver.
If a man, in the course of a scuffle, smashed the limb of another man with a club, he shall
pay one mina of silver.
Capital punishment was reserved for more serious crimes, such as murder or adultery.
Many of the punishments seem rather lenient, even by our standards today, as it appears
that in most cases, those convicted of crimes merely had to pay a fine as punishment.
Ur-Namu is also credited by many historians for starting what's known as the Sumerian
Renaissance.
Reversing the past policies of Sargon and his successors, all of whom actively promoted
the Akkadian language, Ur-Namu and his descendants instituted policies and programs where Sumerian
language and culture would reign supreme.
Sumerian was made the official language of the government and heavily promoted in the
creation of new art and literature.
The heroic epics and hymns of old, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, were circulated and
recited in public, and new ones were composed.
The goal was to bring back Sumer's identity as a Sumerian nation after nearly two centuries
of Akkadian rule and the instability that followed.
There were also many new construction projects as well as restorations of iconic old buildings.
For example, it was during Ur-Namu's reign that the great ziggurat of Ur was expanded
to the towering height that can still be seen today.
Though Ur-Namu set the Neo-Sumerian era in motion, it was during the 47-year reign of
his son and successor, Shulgi, that the Ur III empire reached the height of its prosperity,
size, and artistic achievements.
Shulgi was quite a character, and by his own accounts, larger than life.
If the many hymns dedicated to him are true, then during his reign, between 2094 to 2047
BC, many, including Shulgi himself, considered him to be a god.
The words of one hymn dedicated to Shulgi describe him as a prodigy.
Written in the first person, it goes like this.
I am the king.
From the womb I have been a hero.
I am Shulgi.
From the time I was born I have been a mighty man.
I am the lion with a ferocious look, born by the dragon.
I am king of the four corners.
I am the keeper, the shepherd of the black-headed ones.
I am the noble one, the god of all the lands.
Such hymns were sung both in temples and in public, and were meant to inspire Shulgi's
flock, as he'd call them, to have faith in him as their protector, much like sheep
are watched over and protected from wolves by a good shepherd.
While such hymns may have praised Shulgi's wisdom and prowess in battle, the reality
was that the Ur III state's prosperity was due not to its god-king's divine intervention
or powers, but rather the highly efficient, centralized government that ran the empire.
One thing that the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur did adopt from the Akkadian regime was
their model of a centralized, highly bureaucratic system of government.
This became extremely important as the Ur III state expanded from a moderately sized
kingdom into a full-fledged empire with a vast network of territories and tributary
states.
We know a tremendous amount with regard to the inner workings of how the state functioned
during Shulgi's reign because there's virtually no other period in ancient Near Eastern history
where such a large quantity and variety of documentation has been discovered.
Approximately 100,000, that's right, I said 100,000 of these texts have already been translated,
with thousands more in museum storerooms waiting to be examined.
It's impossible to go over every subject covered in these documents, but the most common
topics and themes revolve around economic activity, agriculture, manufacturing, construction,
domestic and foreign trade, distribution of resources, food rations, military supplies,
troop deployments, taxation and other sources of revenue, the application of various laws,
and the like.
Though the vast majority of these are government documents, meaning that they give us little
information with regard to private citizens and businesses, we still get a window into
how the state dealt with the many civil servants, farmers, herdsmen, builders, priests, soldiers,
and scribes that it worked with.
Taxes were not paid in silver or gold, but in goods such as grain, livestock, textiles,
or even pottery.
Basically, each province paid taxes to the central government in Ur, but these were not
paid throughout the empire on the same day, or even in the same month.
That would have been too difficult for even the large bureaucracy of the Ur III state
to manage.
Instead, each province, of which there were at least 20 of them, paid their share of taxes
during a particular month.
The next month, another province or provinces would pay their yearly tax.
This system was called bala, which means exchange.
Along with being easier to manage, the bala system helped to ensure that the government
would receive at least some income every month.
Though things during Ur-Namu and Shulgi's reigns seemed to have been peaceful at home,
war and conquest were still very much a part of the Ur III empire.
Ur-Namu is said to have been killed in battle against resurgent groups of Gutians, while
Shulgi, after claiming to have avenged him, led campaigns into Elam and brought the cities
of Susa, Anshan, and even the distant kingdom of Marhashi into his orbit.
For the most part, Shulgi's reign of 47 years was one of great stability, progress, and
prosperity for both Sumer and Mesopotamia in general.
However, upon his death in 2047 BC, the empire that he in large part helped to build began
to unravel, and neither of his three successors seemed to have had his charisma and expertise
to stop it from falling apart.
In the beginning, the decline was rather gradual during the reign of Shulgi's son and successor,
Amarsin, but by the reign of the next king, Shusin, rebellions in the provinces were becoming
much more common, with several of them breaking away from the empire completely.
A lot of the empire's problems seemed to have been exacerbated by the consistent migration
into both Sumer and Akkad of a people known as the Amorites.
In Sumerian, they're called the Martu, and their presence in Mesopotamia was not a welcome
one.
The mostly settled and urban Sumerians, who at the time believed that they had reached
the pinnacle of civilization, viewed the nomadic Amorites as savages.
One Neo-Sumerian text disparagingly describes them in the following way.
The Amorites who know no grain.
The Amorites who know no house nor town.
The boars of the mountains.
The Amorite who digs up truffles.
Who does not bend his knees to cultivate the land.
Who eats raw meat.
Who has no house during his lifetime.
Who is not buried after his death.
Like the Akkadians, the Amorites were also a Semitic-speaking people, but from further
west, specifically the Levant.
They had been migrating into central and southern Mesopotamia since at least the reign of Shulgi,
who ordered what's believed to have been history's first real border wall to be constructed
as a means of keeping them out of Sumerian territory.
It didn't work, and by the reign of the third dynasty of Ur's last king, Ibi-Sin, the Amorites
had not only entered parts of Sumer and Akkad in droves, but some Amorite tribes had even
managed to take over several towns and cities, creating their own little fiefdoms in the
process.
As things went from bad to worse in the Sumerian heartland, the areas on the periphery of the
empire all broke away.
In Ilam, Ibarat, one of the kings that Shulgi had originally appointed to rule Anshan on
his behalf, declared his independence and then marched westward with an army to take
the city of Susa.
By 2004 BC, Ibi-Sin ruled an empire in name only.
In reality, his authority was limited to Ur and perhaps a few of its surrounding cities.
Virtually every other place had either succumbed to the will of Amorite chieftains, or their
NCs had declared independence from Ur to form their own little states.
This was when Ibarat's son, Kindatu, made his move.
Leading an army from Susa, he advanced on Ur, sacked the city, and took Ibi-Sin back
to Ilam as a prisoner.
In the end, we don't know what happened to Ibi-Sin, but it's likely that he was executed.
With his capture in 2004 BC, the once glorious Neo-Sumerian Empire, ruled by the Third Dynasty
of Ur, officially came to an end.
The end of the last true Sumerian state also resulted in the phasing out of many, though
not all, aspects of Sumerian culture and identity in Mesopotamia.
Without state support, the use of Sumerian as both the official and common language began
to decline rapidly.
This was in great part due to the influx of new, non-Sumerian peoples into Mesopotamia,
which altered the ethnic and linguistic makeup of Sumer.
A new civilization, which we call Babylonian, was developing that essentially combined the
Sumerian and Akkadian worlds with those of the newcomers to the region, such as the Amorites.
In the first two centuries after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Mesopotamia was
divided up into smaller kingdoms and petty states, many of which were ruled by various
Amorite clans.
Since their language was a close cousin of Akkadian, the latter became even more widespread
throughout Mesopotamia, and by 1800 BC, Sumerian ceased to exist as a spoken language, though
it was still used by scribes as a scholarly and religious one.
For this reason, it was taught in scribal schools perhaps up until the second or first
century BC.
And of course, the Sumerian influence on later Babylonian and ancient Assyrian religion and
culture pervaded both societies throughout their existence.
And not just these two civilizations, we ourselves are indebted to the Sumerians,
who were the first to develop more sophisticated farming techniques, tools like the plow, large-scale
urban planning, the mass production of everyday items such as pottery and textiles, mathematics
and accounting, and of course, probably their most famous contribution, the art of writing.
So I hope that this program has given you a broad knowledge of Sumerian history, culture,
religion, as well as highlighted some of their achievements.
As always, thanks so much for stopping by, I really appreciate it.
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